Anne Innis Dagg (1933–2024)

Read for Build Your Library Book Challenge.
Borrowed from MeL
I forgot to save my review that I wrote. Impressive woman, she wasn't allowed to be a biology professor so she took the path of a Citizen Scientist & made significant contributions to study of animal gaits, description analysis of species, and other things. She authored/co-authored many books & articles and also published some of her own work. She was very active in fighting about inequity & discrimination in Canada academic & elsewhere & environmental activism.… (más)

Anne Innis Dagg rocketed into public view in Canada when the movie about her life, The Woman Who Loves Giraffes was screened in Toronto in 2018. Without support from universities or organizations, using her own resources, Anne set out for Africa to study giraffes before any other woman researcher went out to do field research on large animals. Anne should have received the same ovations as Goodale, Fossey, and Galdikas but was ignored and rejected for tenure by her alma mater, University of Waterloo. All this has changed now and Canadian academia, trying to compensate for lost time, has showered her with accolades. This book is her autobiography and a fine read it is although the reader will cringe at the shame worthy behaviour of the male administrators at the University of Waterloo. Through it all, Anne has continued to be a person others would want to get to know.… (más)

Pursuing Giraffe: A 1950s Adventure by Anne Innis Dagg (2006)

As a toddler Anne Innis sees her first giraffe in the Brookline Zoo in Chicago and she falls in love with them. At age 24, with a degree in zoology from the University of Toronto she sails to England and on to South Africa to study giraffe. It is 1956, she is the first person to actually study live animals in their habitat. She had great difficulty in being accepted in places in southern or east Africa where she could carry out her research because she was a woman. She finally settled on a farm in the Transvaal run by Owen Matthews who hopes to turn it into a reserve to protect animals from poachers.

Anne has purchased a car, both for transportation and for viewing giraffe, she had been told they wouldn’t notice it, but would scatter if she moved about, which proved to be true. For nine months she tracks the animals noting what and when they eat, interaction with each other and their gait among other things. Having nothing to follow she establishes her own methods of keeping research notes on a five minute cycle and on what areas. One interesting fact she recorded was homosexual behaviour among the male giraffe, she later learns it occurs among rhino and about 100 mammals.

After nine months she travels to Tanganyika and to Kenya to meet with people she had corresponded with but was unsuccessful in finding a place to carry on her research. There are nine races of giraffe scattered across southern and east Africa. She does climb Mount Kilimanjaro and observes giraffe as a tourist. She continues her research for a number of months on the farm before returning to Canada.

There are interesting sections on apartheid and politics in South Africa and Tanganyika. She is bothered and appalled by it but also realizes how easy it is to accept the life style. She fights for women’s rights in academic institutions where in the 1960 - 1970’s women are denied tenure, a situation she personally experienced.

A documentary was done based on this book in 2008, “The Woman Who Loves Giraffe” finally making her work know to the general public. She will receive the Order of Canada in 2020, at age 87.

I saw the film and immediately ordered this book. She was and still is an amazing woman!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️… (más)